The Babys - Every Time I Think Of You (HQ)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjU50ow95aM
Simply put, a perfect song in every way: lyrics, instrumentation, singing and pacing.
Nothing wasted, it's all right there for you to hear and see.
When I think back to being at North Miami Beach High School for the second semester of my senior year, early 1979, eager to be out of the confines of the Sunshine State, and then just a few months later, suddenly being far removed from there in spirit and attitude, in Bloomington at IU, where people's musical tastes more closely mirrored my own, I think of this song.
This Babys song was one of the handful of songs that I and my guy friends most loved to sing together in cars, in our dorm rooms, at fraternity houses, at "Swimmer parties" or even walking past certain sorority houses, especially the ones on North Jordan, where we had female friends who were in the IU Music School and who possessed silly-talented voices that could more than handle the female parts of the song.
It probably sounds crazy to read this, especially to those of you who went to Southern schools or small liberal arts schools in the Northeast, but I have so many happy memories of being somewhere in Bloomington with friends on snowy winter nights -but with a window popped open to keep everyone from sweating to death in their sweaters!- and this song being played and EVERYONE in the room, a dozen strong or 200-strong, singing that ending chorus in unison like we were all up on that stage with John Waite, "Every Time I Think of You...."Wow, those were the days!
John Waite is so perfect on this song that it's hard for me to even conceive of someone else doing it justice.
Like someone else ever doing Stardust better than its creator, Hoagy Carmichael, one of IU's greatest alums ever, who wrote the song while a student, and a man whose loyalty and philanthropy to IU is incalculable on the one hand, but runs into the millions of dollars on the other.
http://hoagy.com/
http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/hoagy/
I've even been to the spot, more-or-less, where he composed the iconic song.
http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/hoagy/index.html
Well, okay, I'll grant you that Willie Nelson's is in the conversation for Stardust, because there's no arguing that album of pop standards was a classic, but he and his transcendent talent are the exception to every rule, isn't he?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardust_%28album%29
Right now, this version by Michael Bublé with Naturally 7 is about the best I've heard since that iconic Willie Nelson American Songbook album just knocked everyone's socks off, and was bought by fans from 17 to 70.
Michael Bublé - Stardust [LIVE-HQ] -with Naturally 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cINpA4sSzu0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIviZRTOMbM
